I have found a very simple way how to let Imagine interact with very professional light and lens flares. Because the module lensflr2.ifx is already very stale and has no nice effects.

With my variant you can achieve the most beautiful lighting effects via simple multilayer rendering, which are otherwise only used by 3DS Max or Blender. In addition, my variant is completely simple and takes no time to calculate.

For the original-basic scene, I simply use a self-made filterbrush as a backflare ( Layer 1 )... which is only visible if a body hides the fake light.

This first rendered scene is then imported as a multilayer in a second scene and recalculated with the fake flare in Layer 2 quasi in real time.

I use exactly the same camera (path) position in the animation in Scene 2 and also position the second LensFlare exactly where the Layer 1 flare was positioned. So the Layer 2 Flare outshines the objects as in real ... and the scene looks very real.

Above all, you are no longer dependent on these pensive effects of the Imagine globals lensflr2.ifx module .... and you can design your scenes much more creatively. And you always have full control over your effect, which you can still readjust perfectly.

And I have to say ... the effect looks as if the scene was calculated with a real light source and a flare module.

So that you understand better how it is done, I have uploaded my scene here in the download area. Once you understand how easy this method works, you'll never again use the boring Imagine Lensflare module. Take a look at the multi-pass scene in the Action-Editor! Then you also understand how everything works.

Step 2:project_anim1280x720.is rendering as it is. Please save the images in the folder \renderings\ as * .bmp file with the name .pic

If you use the Scannline Renderer, then in the Requester "Render Setup" under "Options" you have to raise the "Sphere Points" from 12 to 50, so that the planet does not become edgy. If you use raytracing mode, you do not have to do that.

Step 3:If you have rendered all images in the first part, then you open the project "project_flare_multipass1280x720" and render this too. The images from this project then you put in the sub-folder \renderings\flare_multipass\

And that's it. Now you have 2 rendered scenes, which you can use as you wish. Scene 1 would then be without additional flare, while Scene 2 is with lens reflection.

The scene 2 renders in real-time mode, since only the lens effect is added to scene 1.

PS: as I have built the scenes in detail and z.Bsp. you have animated the particles, etc. then you realize everything yourself, if you look closely at the objects and scenes in the Action Editor.

I calculated the scene again with several particles. And there you can see how fine one can adjust the effect by means of scaling. Since you can with many particles or bodies that pass the light, much with copy and paste in Action Editor make

I did not even have time for a cup of coffee to rework the multipass scene!

There are still a lot of good 3D Garikers and entertainers who prefer Imagine3D Blender, Maya or 3d Studio in many things. I am one of them. Because I think you do not always need physics to make good graphics or animation.

Fact is, who does not get along with Imagine, will not get along with Blender or 3d Studio Max. It's like drawing ... all painters and artists use the same ingredients..and a color palette remains a color palette. Often one or the other painter uses other brushes and other mixed pallets. But very often the artists with the smaller equipment are much better and more creative than artists who have equipped themselves with expensive equipment.

You can indeed work with Imagine in such a way that other 3D graphic artists would instantly believe, if you would say that was produced with Maya or 3D Studio.

Imagine z.Bsp. has a great object grouping system, which is not just surface based. So you can work much more effective and clear. Certainly, Imagine has also gotten old and I would like to have some things in the program that are integrated in Blender. But Imagine is just for beginners a slender program, which can basically convey the 1x1 of the 3D craft well.

It is important that you have gained experience with light and shadow and the interplay between light and color. Then you can design almost any graphic or animation so that it can compete in the high end area. Modeling does not always have to play an overriding role, if you know what you want ... and if you have any idea how to stage everything

PS:check out @Fragomatik's YouTube channel ... he's the best proof with his NASA animations that Imagine3D can really be involved in the scene;) His animations have high end quality. All his animations are produced with Imagine2.19.

Yes, you're right I think: the tools an artist uses are secondary to the creative vision! An artist will create, and it doesn't matter if the tool is pencil, charcoal, Imagine3D, or Blender, the goal is to try and achieve their vision.

I used your re-entry plasma technique in my latest video, and credited you in the info text for the video:

Quote:

------------------------------------------------------- Special Thanks to my fellow Imagine-junkie, Karsten (3D-Marabu on YouTube) for sharing his techniques for groovy volumetric effects, which I used during the "re-entry" sequence at 2m41s!https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTBrLwTxSNSFMqyhRibaZnQ/featured -------------------------------------------------------

sorry that I can only answer you today. I was ill had a bad flu ... sore throat, fever, cough ... almost the full program.

Thank you for including me in your new video. Your new video looks great again. Have you already given a like. What I wanted to ask you ... how do you actually set your antialias ... because the anti-aliasing in your videos is always super excelent.

With antialising, I set 'THRESHOLD VALUE' to 0 (best)and check the 'USE BETTER ANTI-ALIASING' box, and usually set the 'RAY LIMIT' slider to between 8 and 32, depending on the complexity of the scene.

It's always a trade-off between quality and render speed, as you know

For fast-moving scenes, I often make the background a separate render pass with some slight DOF blur. But within Imagine DOF is slow to render, so I find that a faster method is to do post-processing in Virtualdub to add motion-blur, just to the background. Then I feed those processed frames to the foreground render pass in Imagine, keeping the foreground in sharp focus, while the background has some nice soft blurring.

Hello Perry, thanks for the tip I have not experimented with the requester "Ray Limit" yet great. I had always set this to 255 and worked with "Threshold Value". But if you z.Bsp. set the "Ray Limit" to 15 and set "Threshold Value" to 0 and also click on "High End Antialias", then the final result is still perfect ... but the Raytracing time is a lot faster!

Ps.why do not you publish any of your new projects here? That would give the forum here more color and shine

Yes, the RAY LIMIT set to a low number (8 to 32) allows faster raytracing but gives great results, especially when animating.

Also, keeping the scene "tight" with all objects within 100 to 300 imagine-units of each other, allows faster raytracing. Even just ONE SINGLE SIMPLE OBJECT on the other side of the 'world', will slow raytrace to a crawl!

Most of the spacecraft objects I model are usually at a scale of about 80 to 150 meters. I use 1:1 scale in imagine, so 1 imagine-unit = 1m. I keep lightsources close to the object, but out of sight, so that everything fits inside a 300x300x300 volume.

If I need objects in the background or mid-ground, I create separate scenes for each, and do multi-pass rendering.

I've thought about uploading projects here, but my assets and objects are all over the place ! Cleaning up my projects would take a lot of work in the Action Dialog and re-organising 100's of files my hard-drives ... I'm too lazy to do that !

Perhaps I will do a project soon just for this site, and I'll build it so that it will be easy for anyone to run, just like your projects

I am currently working on a rather complicated particle scene, in which a lot of particles are involved. Since the computing time is often exorbitantly high, if one does not have a correct rendering concept. However, I put the scene into a 500 Unit x 500 Unit Square and can even save 50% raytracing time with extremely much defined (object) particles through the Ray To Limit option. And in the end you actually see no difference in image quality, whether you have now rendered using RayLimit 255 or 25.

As I said ... Thank you, Perry, for notifying me. Because before I hardly paid much attention to this slider .. and often annoyed me about the high computing time. Before, I had always adjusted the anti-alias settings, but always left this slider at 255. But that was also due to the fact that in the manual just on these important functions and their combinations was hardly considered.And what I also find totally annoying is that these options are not saved in the Stagefile in the IFW version ... and you have to note this down in a text file almost antediluvian. These are all functions that worked perfectly on all Amiga versions!

PS:Incidentally, I meant more that you upload a few pictures of your projects here and then linked to your YouTube videos.